Workers across the planet admit to being overwhelmed by the voracious volume of work-related information they have to consume and digest via e-mail and other information collection systems. Information has to be taken in, but how it is processed, organized and made useful is up for serious debate, say corporate employees. What is the consequence? The quality of their work is suffering say 62 percent of workers, according to a study on productivity of 1,700 white collar employees in the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Australia and South Africa by LexisNexis. Almost 60 percent of workers have noticed a dramatic increase in information since the downturn in the world economy, with a good amount of that information being viewed as primarily useless. "Workers across the globe are just about managing to keep their heads above water in a rising tide of information," said Michael Walsh, CEO of U.S. Legal Markets at LexisNexis. "The results of this survey reveal not just how widespread the problem is, but also the very real impact that information overload has on professionals' productivity and the bottom line. Employers need to do more than simply toss their workers a life preserver and hope for the best." Half of all the workers in these countries believe they are near their breaking points with information, and just over half are demoralized by not being able to manage it all. In the United States, 92 percent of workers have to search for old e-mails every week. In Australia, 58 percent of workers say they experience weekly disagreements with co-workers on how to best manage and organize information. Information overload is not constrained by the workplace. A 2008 study from the University of California, San Diego found Americans consume 100,000 words in non-work-related information, or about 34 gigabytes, on average daily. The study found between 1980 and 2008 bytes consumed in television, gaming and Internet-centric information increased by 350 percent, for an annual rate increase of 5.4 percent. With all that information, workers are admitting their consternation on the job. An astonishing number of employees in the United States—90 percent—report their companies could do more to help better manage information in the workplace, said the LexisNexis study. Eighty-two percent of workers across all five countries in this study say they want information-centric software to function more closely to the way they actually work. "The bad news is that wherever you find knowledge workers around the world, you'll also find information overload," Walsh said in the same statement. “Businesses that really come to grips with this problem could gain a competitive advantage over companies that do not.” Source: LexisNexis

In order to survive in the increasing demands of the workloads that our management offers, we need to keep ourselves from worrying a lot and be more focused on what are the effective ways of building confidence in a team. Team building involves goal setting and a game plan. A virtual organization must always begin a strategy plan with the goal. You cannot hit a target that you don't have your eyes clearly set upon. So setting goals is where the productivity begins. When you have a goal, you can then immediately proceed to the next step of team building. The contemporary management scene also requires that team building strategies should include the understanding of virtual organization and community. Virtual organizations are built so that logistical, personnel and critical resource issues can be addressed. The use of telecommunication and other computing technologies have become the defining ground of any virtual organization. Taking this into consideration is a must in any management and team building initiative. Virtual organization team building should also become more competent in the development and the creation of a strong team that is highly flexible, honest, inspirational and innovative. The innovative techniques to be used in building the qualities of a team results in developing, an energizing, highly efficient and inspiring organization. A good way also to build a team in a virtual organization is the kind of motivation the team builder must create. Motivational talks, tools and strategies are designed to let the team members embrace the leadership role and to help them realize their goals and worth in the changing course of time. Another strategy is to revitalize your team and organization through off-site retreats for one to two days. It really helps to be with nature as you work to amp up the process of company revitalization. The renewal of advocacy vows should be integrated with the aim of providing easy ways of handling responsibilities. The need for innovation should also be integrated in the team building process. The need for a change is very significant in today's defining moment. A change in the team members' values and attitude towards work is also suggested as a major strategy for success. Don't lose heart. Persist in developing your team. Team building can be a very exciting job when the participants are willing to be changed for the better. Source: EzineArticles

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If you and your teammates are experiencing communication problems, I have one question for you. How much of your communication is happening via email? When the problems are many, the percentage is usually high. This is because email is missing some key information that helps us understand the message, namely body language and vocal qualities. In research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a study found that email recipients only correctly interpreted an email's tone 50% of the time. The study also found that people believed they got it right 90% of the time. You can image the problems this can lead to on a team that communicates primarily through email. Most teams would benefit from using less email and having more telephone and face-to-face conversations. But let's face it. Email is great because I can fire off a message whenever it's convenient for me and not have to be present if there's an unpleasant reaction. If you are going to use it, then I recommend the following tips. My guess is that everyone has at least a couple of these they could improve upon.

• Get their attention with an appropriate (honest and interesting) subject line. Don't trick them by overdoing it.
• Keep it short and to the point. People are busy and won't read your email if it looks too long.
• Pay attention to spelling, grammar and punctuation. Make it easy to read, unless you want to send the message that you are either uneducated or don't care.
• Make it personal, using proper salutations and sign-offs.
• Use the right level of formality. This is dependent upon the relationship you have with the intended recipient. Choose the wrong level, and you risk offending.
• Send it only to the person or people who need to receive it.
• Assume your email will be forwarded, especially to people you don't want to see it.
• Don't try to convey humor, sarcasm, or other complex ideas. It just doesn't come through very well.

Effective communication is critical to a team's success. Make email effectiveness one key part of your overall team development strategy. Source: EzineArticles

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Team Motivation increase productivity and energize your staff or even yourself to do more at the work place. Team motivation is an important skill of a leader or a manager. Our own experience and research show that team motivation increase productivity no matter what type of business you manage. This is related to the following factors: 1. Work achievement: Staff who achieve a goal that is well directed by their supervisor are work motivated usually. They come to work the next to make the next achievement milestone. 2. Recognition: Staff who achieves his or her manager directed goals and work hard and long hours to achieve them expect to be recognized. They would expect usually for salary increase, bonus, or a job promotion. "Thank you" is a great work motivator. Praising loudly is a Team motivation that subordinates like a lot. Failing to give it to them fades the Team motivation, self motivation and team motivation! Never steal credit of your staff. 3. The work environment: is a great work motivator. Decent surroundings motivate staff to come to work and feel at home. This factor covers the team the staff operates within and the overall culture of the entity. Free coffee, as simple idea as it sounds, make a big difference. 4. Self growth: is a work related motivator. Put it simply, staff who don't get promoted in their jobs for long lose the Team motivation. A good gauge for self growth at work is the salary increase, job title, authority and responsibilities given to grow the self growth and self esteem. To summarize, Team motivation is necessary to increase productivity and retain the skilled staff. How to motivate staff at work depends on your understanding of the needs and goals in life for each staff you manage or supervise. It is your analysis and frank discussion that will help you know your staff better and assess the team motivation they seek. Source: EzineArticles

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[caption id="attachment_600" align="alignleft" width="448" caption="Photo Credit: mikaylasway.com"] [/caption] If you are a leader you will be leading at least one and in reality probably multiple teams. Building a successful team is a challenge but there are some simple things that you can do to greatly enhance the likelihood of success. Be clear on the results If you are to have any chance of building a successful team you need to start by getting clear about the outcome or result that is to be achieved. The result needs to be specific and written in a language that will be understood by everyone. Remember that vague specification of results is likely to lead to okay but less than optimal outcomes. Be clear about the skills you need A successful team needs to have the right blend of skills to deliver the results. A soccer team for example needs the right mix of defensive, attacking and creative players. A business team is no different. Get clear on the essential skills to deliver the results you want. Be clear about the attributes that are needed Skills are important but they are only part of what helps you achieve results. Attributes or interpersonal qualities are just as important. They include areas like motivation, influencing, relationship building, personal drive and resilience to name just a few. Make sure that you don't lose sight of having the right attributes when building your team. Bring out the best in everyone It's all too easy to pigeon hole people or make up what they can or cannot do based on their job title. You know the kind of things that people say day in day out like marketing are the only creative folks, accountants won't take any risks, quality assurance get in the way, human resources are too rules based to name just a few. Make a point of finding out what people can bring to the table rather than just guessing what they can or cannot do. Recognize that it takes time No team ever leaps immediately from forming to performing. They go through a series of stages where they move forward, move back, work together, have conflict and hit obstacles. Accept this and see it as a short term setback for a bigger long term gain. Bottom Line - Teams can deliver great results. So what do you need to do differently as a leader to get more success from teams? Source: EzineArticles

One of the best goals to have is to create effective work habits, and your interest in wanting to find out how to achieve this is a major positive step already. So if you want to be more effective at work, here are some tips to help you out: 1.    Have proper motivation. With most resolutions, a major deciding factor to your success is a healthy motivation. It's best that you have a good and constructive reason that will truly push you to succeed. And your motivation shouldn't be about what others think, or about "proving yourself" to others. Try to be motivated instead to be the best person that you could be. 2.    Practice time management. The chunk of having effective work habits has something to do with time management. Think of it this way: time is even more valuable than money, since you can earn back money even if you lose it, but you can never take back wasted time.  There are many methods for effective time management; it's really a matter of finding out what works best for you based on your personality, your type of job, and your preferences. It isn't any good to lay out a time management plan and then just give it up soon after because it doesn't suit you. Effectively managing your time can start simply by having the right tools where you can take note of your deadlines and responsibilities. Then, you could visualize how long it will take for you accomplish your tasks and plan your schedule accordingly. The whole point to this is that you'd have better control of your work time, and there'd be fewer chances of you missing deadlines. 3.    Don't hesitate to break your tasks into chunks. This is related to tip number 2. Many people have a tendency to want to do their tasks in one sitting, usually the day right before it is due. It's really time to take a different perspective - got an extra 30 minutes on your hands? Check your task list to see which tasks you've got pending, and experiment how much you'd be able to accomplish in that short amount of time. 4.    Have a role model and mentor. It's a great idea to have someone at your workplace who understands your work situation and will know how to guide you to get where you want to be. This person will have to be someone you look up to and who is very effective at work. Ask guidance from that person; chances are, he'd only be too happy and flattered that you'd ask his help. 5.    Resolve to have work-life balance. Just because you're bent on being more effective at work doesn't mean you'd neglect your personal life. In fact, having a life outside of work gives you motivation to do better at your profession. And again, practice proper time management so you'd have time to balance both 6.    Be consistent. Habits form when they are done consistently for about 3 weeks. Be disciplined about adopting effective workplace techniques and you'd find that you'd start doing them automatically. There you have it! These are highly doable ways for you to start creating effective work habits. Remember, it all starts with the proper motivation, and the consistency to carry it through! Good luck! Source: How To Do Things

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Email is an extremely convenient mode of communication; perhaps too easy, as it seems to invite people to contact you for sometimes barely any reason at all. And with all that email coming in that needs attention, it can be hard to get anything else done. So how can you get a grip on your business emails before it gets its grip on you? Getting Control Of Email Success in small business relies on discipline, focus and good time management. Often, however, necessary tasks like checking, reading and responding to emails can start to overtake productive work time and decrease your productivity - and in turn, your profitability. That is why it's important for you to be managing emails, rather than letting emails manage you. Here are some pointers from the experts:

• Schedule time for checking emails; this can be once, twice, or three times daily at times that fit into your schedule. Block out time and when the time is up, move on to other pressing matters.
• Do not use email for emergency contacts; inform clients and business associates that you are not available immediately via email, and that they should phone or contact you via instant message or mobile phone for pressing matters. This makes it possible for you to handle emails in chunks rather than constantly throughout the day. Be careful who you give emergency contact information to, though, so that it is used for its intended purpose.
• Turn off automatic alerts, both audio and visual, so that you are not tempted to immediately respond every time a new message comes in, breaking into your productive work time.
• Deal with emails during your 'down time'; do not schedule your most creative and productive times of day for organising emails. Put email management into your schedule where it makes sense - those times of day when you need to slow down, or that do not take away from more complex activities.
• Use tools for organising emails; get to know the features of your email client and use them to prioritise emails. For instance, separate emails into folders according to priority levels, clients, or subjects, or use settings to automatically send emails to appropriate folders or locations.
• Respond to emails when read; many people will read all emails before responding, and then go back and start with the most important ones. But this only multiplies the time it takes to get through the lot. Respond to emails as they are read, and you will not have to begin all over again sifting through them.
• Separate business and personal emails; do not give out business email addresses to friends and family that do not have a business reason to contact you.

Email is a very useful and important business tool, but if you don't learn how to efficiently manage your emails they will begin to take over your business life. Put into practice these and other tips to put email in its rightful place. Source: EzineArticles

1. Cut Your Workday by 30 Minutes You will get more done. A deadline forces you to eliminate all the little time-wasters (silly interruptions, procrastination, perfectionism). Just because you can work all the time doesn't mean you should. If you work in an office, stick to your scheduled hours. If you work at home, set an alarm to end your workday, and dedicate evenings and weekends completely to your personal life.

2. Define an Outcome for Every Meeting Identify a topic and outcome for every meeting, and send it to all participants a minimum of 24 hours beforehand so that everyone comes prepared. Well-run, useful meetings provide enormous value--they can solve problems, generate ideas, save you time, clarify direction, tighten work bonds, build teamwork, and reignite passion for projects. 3. Reduce Paper Clutter Eighty percent of what is filed is never looked at again. Before saving any document, ask yourself whether you would trust that the information is up to date next time you look for it. If not, it's time to pitch, shred or recycle. For printing, use duplex printing to generate fewer pages. When it comes to printing information from web pages, consider using software such as Canon Easy-WebPrint EX--and print only the information you really need. 4. Create Templates As entrepreneurs, we write many proposals, thank you notes, customer e-mails and press releases to various contacts. However, there is no need to write from scratch every time. While you don't want your correspondence to sound like a form letter, writing every letter from scratch is an enormous waste of time. Creating a template for every document that must be sent more than once opens up your schedule for other work. Just be sure to customize your template based on the contact to whom you are writing. 5. Set the Due Date No matter how much room you leave for creativity in the delegation process, never be vague about the due date. If you leave the due date vague, other priorities will usurp your delegatee's focus, or not leave you enough time to correct the work, if necessary. Leave enough of a cushion so that if the work doesn't come back as you'd hoped, there is enough time to correct it before the real deadline. It's sometimes helpful to give the person an estimate of how long you think the task should take and how long you want them to spend on it. Put a reminder in your planner to follow up the day the task is due. Source: Entrepreneur.com

Today's smartphones make it easy to check e-mail, so there's no excuse for having an overflowing inbox. But if you're just starting out as an entrepreneur, there's a good chance you're using a consumer-oriented "POP3"  e-mail service, which can become a headache as your business takes off. Here's why: Short for "Post Office Protocol 3," POP3 downloads messages to your device's e-mail client, such as Outlook or Entourage, and then deletes them from the server. So if you check messages from multiple devices--say, a laptop at home, a desktop in the office and a smartphone in between--each of their inboxes is different. It's more efficient to use an e-mail system based on Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP), which keeps all of your devices' inboxes in sync by giving each one a copy of your messages but still preserving the original on the server. That means, for example, that you can read a message on your laptop in the morning and review it again in the afternoon from your smartphone. Ditto for messages you've sent, deleted or moved to a special folder, because every time one of your devices connects with the server, it gets an updated snapshot of your whole account. With POP3, you'd have to update each device individually and manually--a huge waste of time and a great way to get yourself in a position where an important message is on your desktop, but all you have is your smartphone. Not all e-mail providers charge extra for IMAP. For example, Google's free Gmail uses IMAP and works with most major e-mail apps, such as Outlook, Taroby and smartphone operating systems, such as Android, iPhone and Windows Mobile. Source: Entrepreneur.com

No matter how much planning, preparation, and winnowing of your schedule you do, there are still times when responsibilities can wreak havoc on your to-do list. Whether at work or at home, there will be days or weeks when a lot of things just have to get done. How you face and perceive these challenges, though, will determine your stress and anxiety levels throughout this process. 1. Maintain perspective. Now is the time to remind yourself of the big picture and of the temporary nature of this stress. Why are you taking on these responsibilities? What is the goal of all your hard work? Looking at the end result reinforces the temporary nature of your current condition. 2. Don't lose sight of the details. Be sure every vital to-do item is written on your list and methodically work your way through these items. If an important action is not on your list, you'll worry about it unnecessarily. Also, remember to get done the most important work first. 3. Embrace some of the stress. A little bit of stress (what is known as short-term, fight-or-flight stress) can be a good thing, especially if it helps to push you through your work. Use any stress you're feeling to your advantage to give you a boost of energy to get many items checked off your list. 4. Take breaks. Research shows that you'll be more productive if you alternate between mindful and mindless work. You're more likely to finish all of the items on your list if you take a short break for mindless work for at least five or 10 minutes every hour. 5. Manage expectations. Regularly check in with the people who are waiting on the completion of your to-do items. The more they know about where you are in the process, the better they can anticipate and plan their to-do lists. How often and how detailed your updates need to be will be determined by the type of responsibilities you have. 6. Don't extend the stress. Now is not the time to take on a new project. Schedule appointments to talk about new opportunities for a few days or weeks down the line. You don't have to say, "no," you just need to say, "not right now." 7. Celebrate. When you're finished with your massive to-do list, or at least the extremely weighty parts of it, take time to celebrate. You don't need to go on a vacation (although, vacations are nice), but a reward of some kind is definitely in order. I'm quite fond of a walk to the ice cream shop. Image Courtesy businessweek Source: unclutterer